The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

by George Lakoff

In capitalist economic theory, employment is a transaction in which the employer buys the labor of the employees and the employees sell their labor to the employer. Hence the term labor market. It is assumed in economic transactions that both will seek the best deal. Unions create the best deal for the resource-employees. Unions function to equalize the power of the company over the employee. Short of outsourcing, companies cannot function without any resource-workers at all. If the company is unionized, then all the workers as a group have bargaining power that a solitary worker does not have. The alternative—taking whatever the company offers to the individual—might well be called corporate servitude or wage slavery. As the power of unions has declined, the wages of resource-workers have not gone up in thirty years. Over the same time, the wealth of wealthy investors and corporations has skyrocketed without more being produced.

Re: unions